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Health news

25/04/2005 The program of clinical examination for the prevention and treatment of disease was approved in Moscow

The Mayor of Moscow signed the enactment, approving the program of clinical examination for the prevention and treatment of the disease during 2005-2007.

According to the document, the Mayor assigns 120,7 million rubles in 2005, 285,8 million rubles– in 2006, 246,6 million rubles – in 2007.

During the 2002-2004 the clinical examination of Moscow dwellers was carried out on 7 programs among heterogeneous groups of people, formed according to the kind of pathology. More than 1 million of children, 350 thousand of adolescents, 700 thousand of grown-ups were examined annually for the prevention of cardiovascular and other kinds of illnesses.

The realization of each of the programs let achieving definite results and goals. The number of children with chronic ailments decreased from 9,2 to 8,5 % during three years. About 86 thousand of Moscow dwellers turned out to suffer from cardiovascular ailments (including diabetes) and thus were taken under clinical examination control for treatment. The situation with TB-illnesses was improved in the capital.

It should be mentioned that Moscow is the only city in the Russian Federation, which has saved the program of clinical examination for the prevention and treatment of disease.

25/04/2005 The Russian will be fed according to prisoner camp standards

The approved enactment of the Russian Federation about the minimal norms of the imprisoned catering suggests the following set of products. The imprisoned are given 550 gram potato and 250 gram vegetables, 550 – bread, 90 – meat, 100 – fish, 30 – sugar, 20 – salt per 24 hours. On the whole, 27 rubles 29 kopeck per person.

The Minister of Health and Social Development Mikhail Zurabov reported on the meeting of the government of the Russian Federation the minimal norms of public catering. The difference between the prison catering and the common one is that one can’t buy actually anything on the money assigned. Millions of Russian people will get bread and potato twice less as those, who are imprisoned, according to the Minister – 367 and 300 gram. In return a piece gram of meat is 102 gram – on 12 gram more than in prison!

To make it worse, let’s compare the norms of catering in prisoner-of-war camps during the Great Patriotic War. According to the order of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs in 1941, the catering was supposed to let the imprisoned avoid dying of depletion and starvation. Thus monthly he was given 21,6 kilogram bread, while the Ministry suggests setting 11,5 kilogram as a norm now. Though, it should be mentioned that the project was sent on revision.

This was announced during the VII All-Russian congress “Healthy public catering of Russia”. According to the data of statistics, troubles in nourishing have almost 100 % of interviewees. They don’t get vitamins and microelements; their food contains little fruit and vegetables. About 3 % are undernourished.

According to the nourishing norms established by the International Public Health Service Organization a person should get 959,7 kilogram of various products (including water) annually. Russia doesn’t get amount of 250 kilogram.

What’s the worse that could happen? And still it could. If the living wage is settled, proceeding from the assumptions of the Ministry of Health and Social Development and the super-minima they’ve established, the living wage will be equal to the nourishing in prison. More than that, millions of needy people will automatically become well-to-do and that’s how they will have no right to social support.

Full text is available only in the Russian version.

21/04/2005 Have you sent for a doctor?

“Any Russian irrespective of his domicile ought to be rendered medical aid”, believes the manager of the Department of Public Health Service of Moscow Andrei Seltsovsky.

“Rossiyskaya Gazeta” newspaper: How many healthy people are there in Moscow now?

Andrei Seltsovsky: More than a half.

“RG”: Is it many or few?

Seltsovsky: Not many to my mind. But I should tell at once, that the medical men are not to be guilty of this. Life in big cities doesn’t make one healthy. Besides, the Moscowers do not take care of their health, actually as well as the dwellers of other big cities. .

RG: What’s happening now with the fringe benefits?

Seltsovsky: I’ll speak about Moscow. We’ve started discussing the medical ensuring several years before. But we didn’t take into account the fact that a lot of people, who had the right to get free medications but knew that it was impossible to get them, didn’t turn for them. And when people realized that they really can have these free medications, the number of the privileged increased… There is always an opportunity to get full information about medical ensuring.

RG: Has it helped to get rid of abuse?

Seltsovsky: Significantly. Though there are always some problems. Nevertheless we had no problems with forgery prescriptions. Everybody knew that there are local drugstores in almost each out patients’ clinic and there was no possibility to get the necessary medication with a forgery prescription.

RG: Is the situation same in the regions?

Seltsovsky: I can’t actually say that… The situation with the list of medications is rather complicated. We think about its curtailment. It’s very difficult to use and regulate it, when there are more than 2000 names in it.

RG: What are the perspectives and possibilities of adopting paid medical system?

Seltsovsky: I don’t even want to here about it. There are no official documents on this topic, as well as there are no social possibilities for it. The commercial system exists. But we can’t control the quality of the commercial medical aid rendering as we’ve used to. Both state and commercial medical institutions have the right to exist. But we can’t make the privileged people pay for medical aid rendering – they just have no money for it.

RG: Some of our readers do ask questions about “family doctors”.

Seltsovsky: Somebody just wanted to have his own family doctor, forgetting the fact that these physicians should be properly prepared. We’ve adopted the system from the US, which has spent a huge sum of money on the system, tried to perfect it during all these 15 years and in the end is constantly getting rid of it. Besides we forget that we have these doctors- they work in villages. These people should be supported!

RG: Will the Russian be able to get a highly qualified medical aid after all these reforms?

Seltsovsky: I can’t answer this question, because I can’t tell what will happen. The only thing I know for sure is that there must be a system in the country, when any citizen will be able to get a qualified medical aid.

In the Russian version of the text one can read about the problems of medical aid rendering to people, who are neither registered in Moscow nor have Moscow domicile, and solutions to these problems. Full text is available only in the Russian version.

Irina Krasnopolskaya

21/04/2005 Free pill

The government isn’t going to save money by the means of the privileged

The new system of medical ensuring appeared to be of great vitality, according to the acting manager of the Federal Public Health Service Inspectorate attached to the Ministry of Health and Social Development Elena Telnova. The free medical preparations are prescribed to the patients according to the list of medications approved by the Ministry of Health and Social Development. The system was suggested by the International Public Health Service Organization and has been approved in 156 countries. In Russia the government assigns 350 rubles per person, and the medications are given only to the people in need.

Nevertheless a lot of the privileged are unsatisfied with the new changes. Previously it was the list of the categories of people who had the right to this or that fringe benefits, among them were those who had the right to have all kinds of medications for free. However, according to Telnova, this list was abolished by nobody. These are the regions that have no wish to improve the state of the privileged.

At the end of March the list of free medications was enlarged. Now it consists of 457 medical preparations. Though, some of the medications were cut out because of their low effectiveness. In the nearest future the government supposes to solve one more problem: the lack of information of the doctors. According to the latest data, they use only 70-120 kinds of medical preparations out of the whole list. That’s how the Ministry of Health and Social Development has established “Reference-book of medications” and the “Clinical standards in diagnostics and medical treatment of illnesses”. The books are already sent to the hospitals and out patients’ clinics.

Tatiana Efremenko

Full text is available only in the Russian version.

19/04/2005 There should be the national conception of public health service legislation

The meeting of the Interregional Council devoted to the problems of the public health service legislation, took place on April 15, 2005. The central problem discussed during the meeting was the necessity of the national conception of public health service legislation.

The participants of the meeting agreed that this conception should take into account both the most urgent problems of medical aid rendering (the quality of imported and home medications, unprincipled advertisements of medications, etc) and legislative securing of the sphere.

Copyright 20022018, Federal Public Health Institute The project is funded by WHO/CIDA Health Care Policy and Stewardship Programme in Russia Developed in co-operation with the EU funded Tacis "North West Health Replication Project"